What Does a Jew Want?; or, The Political Meaning of the Phallus Daniel Boyarín In his essay 'The 'Uncanny' " (1919), Freud recounts a moment when he looks accidentally at a mirror and imagines he sees some- one else: "I can still recollect that I thoroughly disliked his appear- ance. ... Is it not possible, though, that our dislike of [the double is] a vestigial trace of the archaic reaction which feels the 'double' to be something uncanny?" ("Uncanny" 248П).1 Strangely, no matter how many uses and stagings of the uncanny he describes, Freud always returns it to castration. He even connects Rank's account of the "double" with dreams, within which castration represents "a doubling or multiplication of a genital symbol" (235). After listing example after example of uncanny moments having nothing to do with castration,2 Freud concludes: "We have now only a few remarks to add, for animism, magic and sorcery, the omnipotence of thoughts, man's attitude to death, involuntary repetition and the castration complex comprise practically all the factors which turn something frightening into something uncanny" (243). Something in Freud's world was clearly pressing in this direction with remark- able insistence. In a later text, Moses and Monotheism (1939), Freud argues that circumcision "makes a disagreeable, uncanny impression, which is to be explained no doubt by its recalling the dreaded castration" (91; see also "Uncanny" 247-48). Reversing the terms of Freud's Discourse, 19.2, Winter 1997, pp. 21-52. Copyright by © 1997 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309. 21